In quest of better performance and visibility: the CPTA organizes strategic planning workshop

Resolution 61(XXXII) 02 on the Guidelines and Measures for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Africa or the Robben Island Guidelines (RIG) confers on the CPTA, a very broad and general mandate. The resolution does not however set out any clear guidelines on how this mandate can effectively be executed. Since its establishment, the CPTA exercises its mandate through the organization of training/sensitization workshops/seminars on the RIG in particular and the prohibition and prevention of torture in general, undertaking promotion visits to States Parties to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and publications. These have however been undertaken in an unsystematic and ad hoc manner with insufficient guidelines and no strategic plan to guide its work.

It was therefore in a bit to reverse the above trend that the CPTA organized a three days Strategic Planning Workshop from 14 - 16 July 2011 in Dakar, Senegal. The workshop brought together CPTA members and Secretariat staff supporting the CPTA and was facilitated by an expert from the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT). For three days, members brainstormed on and critically assessed the performance of the mechanism, its challenges, its vision, mission, strategic objectives and activities amongst others.

The workshop came up with a blue print for a three years strategic plan for the CPTA to run from 2012 to 2014, which will be finalized before the end of the year. It is hoped that the strategic plan will give more clarity to the CPTA mandate, add impetus to its work and improve its performance and visibility in the discharge of its mandate of making effective, the prohibition and prevention of torture on the African continent.

The Strategic Planning Workshop was preceded by a Meeting of CPTA members during which members reviewed the performance of the mechanism in the first half of 2011, examined the state of execution of activities in the 2011 CPTA work plan and planned for activities to be undertaken during the remaining half of the year.